


If Your Mind Dislike Anything (Obey It)

by Meduseld



Category: Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel, Marvel (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Cyberpunk, Body Horror, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Cyberpunk, M/M, Post-War, Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-23
Updated: 2020-11-23
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:34:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 21,325
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27389554
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Meduseld/pseuds/Meduseld
Summary: Steve Rogers is almost awake in a world he barely understands when his past comes back to haunt him.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 24
Kudos: 32
Collections: Marvel Reverse Big Bang 2020





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> My cyberpunk spin on [Brittany's](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Britt_pknapp/pseuds/Britt_pknapp) wonderful [art](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27679048) for the 2020 Marvel Reverse Big Bang. And a shoutout to [Faustess](http://www.archiveofourown.org/users/Faustess/pseuds/Faustess) for being a great beta, willing to indulge my quirks. [ The title doesn't have a typo, it's direct from Hamlet](https://www.sparknotes.com/nofear/shakespeare/hamlet/page_318/) ;)

__

_Don’t get distracted by the cat_ , they told him, _because it isn’t real_. 

They’d been boarding the grey steel air transpo, and if anything he’d been distracted by the fact that years and tech advancements between them, they all smelled the same. The not quite stench of close packed dirt and bodies, even if they were more metal than flesh these days. 

_It’s a tried and true method_ , they kept going, or Rumlow did, like they thought that had been the thing to confuse him. _Because it’s something ordinary enough that you can’t dismiss it out of hand because a cat_ could _get in, if it really wanted. And we all see it, we gotta transmit it on everyone’s psylink in the local feed because it sticks out if we don’t, gets caught in protection filters, and anyway, if everyone can see it he thinks it’s real so he has to process it_. 

And loses valuable seconds and computing power, he doesn’t add. 

_But don’t focus on it, everyone does the first time. It works, Rogers, you’ll see_. He nodded at Rumlow and didn’t say what he wanted to, which was _I’m not gonna see the fucking cat_. 

When Erskine had made him new, his focus had been on the organic, rebuilding the flesh from the inside instead of replacing the body. But if Fury hadn’t made it clear to them that Steve wasn’t wired up like the rest of them, he’s not going to be the one to do it. 

It’s not on him what they assume. 

There’s enough on his plate as is. He’s still getting used to calling it SHIELD instead of the OSS and to being more of a spy than a soldier. 

Even if the war seems to be almost the same, just fought with better weapons and augmented combatants. 

Rumlow’s eyepiece spins, like a shiny black beetle eating its way into his skull. There’s a strange fold to the skin under it, bulging slightly. It makes it even harder not to see the blue-black carapace of the bug digging into his face. 

It’s not a flight of fancy. It’s just the echoing memory of all the insect-riddled corpses he’s seen. Idly, he wonders if it even works that way anymore. 

He’s been told plenty of things have gone extinct. Maybe no one rots in this century. Or maybe one day Rumlow will be nothing but a bare skull with a cracked eyepiece in it. 

“You good?” Rumlow says because he has a hard time staying quiet, the way Dum Dum did, back in the day. His facewire aches, a sympathetic hurt, calling to frequencies no one’s used in decades. 

It had been cutting edge at the time. It’s a museum piece now. 

Steve nods, pretending it’s hard to hear him, even though modern engines hardly make a sound. 

Let him think it’s a side effect of age. Even if Fury’s techs, white-robed and silent, said he was as healthy as ever. 

Rumlow leans back, the piece spinning again, so fast Steve can hear its dull whirr. He might be the only one. 

Even now, most people can’t equal his senses. Even Fury didn’t realize Steve could hear him talking through the thick walls of the Ticonderoga facility where he’d woken up. If that was the right word. 

It hadn’t felt like sleep. He hadn’t dreamt. It had felt like an eye-blink, the water rushing toward him, and then he was looking at a dull ceiling deep in the earth. 

Through the poured concrete walls, alive with hissing wires, he'd heard Fury growl about stasis and suspended animation and whether or not Steve's hardware and wetware would make a full recovery, since there wasn't any back up on record, not that there would have been. 

It had taken Steve a while, and the broken limbs of the agents that had tried to stop his unceremonious exit, to realize Fury meant his brain. 

Apparently almost everyone was uploaded now. Almost. 

"Romanoff on site?" he said, just to say something. He knew she was, not looking like herself, or at least not the version he usually got. 

Romanoff tended to keep her regular human face on around him. At least the one he thought of as regular. 

She didn't realize that after a war where he'd seen almost every disfigurement imaginable, and a few HYDRA invented themselves, Steve was less than comfortable with a pristine exterior. He knew it wasn't right. Not on people like them. 

Even he had scars. 

Rumlow nodded, slowly, compensating for the weight of the eye. There was a mild sloshing sound as he did. Steve wondered how far into his head the piece extended. 

When his wire was put in, after he'd come from Erskine's machine with a new body he hardly knew how to use, he'd been thankful his mother was long in her grave. She'd have hated to see it. 

The Lord didn't give us these bodies to remake, she'd said, more than once, looking at the things they were doing then in Paris and London, at the time, the stronger legs and thicker arms, metal grafted onto bone. Some of that was the Bible, Steve knew. 

And some was the years with his Father, the stiff half of his face always a few moments behind when it came to moving his eyes or lips. The sort of first gen prosthetics they kept in museums now. 

Steve had gone to a few, before it made him too sad. Like maybe he should step behind the glass himself. 

The chest piece of the guy he was almost sure was Rollins, because they all looked the same to him, bulky and armored, like black-carapaced beetles, big enough to eat Rumlow’s face in a single bite, beeped. STREAMING LOCAL FEED NOW it announced and the sound of it began humming somewhere low and far away in Steve's jaw. 

He could focus it, and would, but not now. He'd wait to be a little closer to let the stream turn into a river of information, all the transmissions, great and small, around their target. 

They used to be serious, even in London, during the war. Mourning and information and bombers stopped, pubs turned to rubble, children missing and gone. 

Now it was mostly selfies and dog pictures and calendar reminders, interspersed by quick bursts of traffic incidents and shoot-outs. 

There shouldn't be any of that around the sleek and gleaming high rise in downtown San Fransokyo, in the heart of the safest district, surrounded by extensive private security. Corporations didn't tend to skimp. 

He didn’t like it, since it meant watching them play with figures in real time, without caring about the lives behind the stocks. 

Slowly, like turning up the fire on a stove, he let the stream in. Steve let it rise and fall in pitch, trying to catch a glimpse of Romanoff. He liked her. She would say that was stupid. 

Maybe it was the honesty he enjoyed. 

ETA FIVE MINUTES, said probably Rollins' chest piece, a real-time sat map flickering to life for last-minute study. It all seemed good, the usual three-piece suited crowd moving around like grey-backed ants. 

Steve could picture their streams, all new-fangled diets and portfolio options, no matter that less than 3 klicks away people were starving in the streets. They’d been born corporate, just like the ones Steve had despised as a boy. 

Just because it was called The Great Depression didn’t mean it had _greatly_ affected everyone. Those things never did. 

He put the thought out of his head. He’d had plenty of practice. 

They’d checked over their gear, frequencies, body armor. It made him ache for the Howlies all over again, no one teasing him over the shield or swearing in French. And then Steve readied for the drop. 

No matter how much the world had changed, gravity was the same. His stomach rose inside him as they tumbled down, the electric crackle of the feeds they came up on ringing in Steve’s face. 

They moved quickly inside, and there was the target, SMITH, H., staring dumbly at the corner of a door at the virtual ghost of a cat. 

Steve started to raise his wrist, the shield hot and humming with light, eager to go. He never got a chance to throw it.

The woman huddled by the floor, her suit the same non distinct shade of grey, blonde hair still perfectly bunned, sprang up, the skin melting away from her hand, and thrust two sharp silver fingers into his neck.

Romanoff, winking at him as he turned, shield up just in time to stop the two bullets the remaining guards had fired at him, deflecting with glowing starburst on the holofield. 

He threw it easily, got them both and saw Rumlow and probably-Rollins seal up the gap. They were perfectly on schedule. 

Which was of course when it went wrong. He heard it, first. The mucus lined gasp of a man desperate for air as his throat foamed and swelled too much for anything to get through.

Smith looked like a dying fish, gaping and contorting as something rushed over his veins and behind him, Romanoff’s face was too set, smoothed too far to be human, her fingers still at this neck. 

They shouldn’t be, she should’ve shocked him hard at the base of his skull and tied him up for Steve to haul him in easily. It rippled over her, her features rising and falling, a strained focus in her face and then her hand no longer looked like anything but a silver drill. 

Steve couldn’t tell if it was blood or sinew around the ends of it, not with the possibilities of what could leak from a body these days, from cerebrospinal fluid to diesel, but he knew whatever had been triggered was catching. 

He could almost hear it straining toward Romanoff. It was hungry.  
He reached over Smith, or what was left of him, his face more looking like a balloon filled with green-yellow cement, his eyes just slits leaking grey pus between hot pink slabs of eyelids, and yanked her off. 

She made a noise that set his teeth on edge, something between a hiss and metallic grinding, and he hauled her over his shoulder. “I had that,'' she snarled as they hustled to the exfil point. 

The mission was supposed to be three minutes between drop and exit, to the moment where they were meant to strap Smith into the empty prisoner seat secured to the center of the helo and fly. 

It had been four, and they had nothing to show for it but the stain of pink foam on the hem of Romanoff’s grey corporate skirt. 

The AI hadn’t prepared them for this, and it should have. 

No one said anything except Romanoff, once. “Mycotoxin” she ground out, carefully unscrewing the sharp tips of the gunmetal limbs hidden under the skin of her fingers, and kicking them away as they fell.


	2. Chapter 2

It was probably near dawn when Steve finally made it back topside, ready to return to the small concrete room that he kept. Was allowed to keep might be closer to the truth. 

The sky stayed dark, the way it always did in the narrow winding streets of the district around SHIELD HQ, a warren made for spies and soldiers needing to hide or fend off attack. The river running around it helped. 

Only one of the things that reminded him of home, of another river whispering close to the shoebox place he’d shared with Bucky before the war. But back then, you could see the colors of the sky all the time. 

Not just scattered glimpses when the weather was good. 

They told him it had been his generation that had done it, with diesel fumes and more, burning the earth and blackening the sky. 

He’d been away all that time, enough for the sky to turn to smoke. You could still see it clear, if you flew. 

It had been what Steve was thinking of when they’d been swallowed up by the steel-skinned building where they landed, sinking deep inside in a narrow elevator to meet Fury somewhere below the surface of the street. 

Not even close to how far down it went, clustered protectively around an artificial brain. 

There had been quiet in the little metal box, none of the triumphant ribbing they had been hoping for. Smith was too dead to interrogate, his skull filled with a slush they couldn’t have scanned even if they wanted to. A total wash. Even if they hadn’t lost anyone, either. 

So Fury had been pissed, the matte black absence of half his face somehow alight with the rage he was trying not to project. 

It didn’t remind Steve of insects. Just the reality of his bones, made visible. Steve still wasn’t sure what the implant could do, if anything. 

Maybe it was just there to make sure his brain didn’t leak out of his skull. Or it was what the wildest rumors said, direct access to SHIELD’s AI, humming all around them. 

Steve really hoped not, he had enough trouble taking orders from a machine at the best of times. 

There was a heart missing from everything, these days. 

It was what he was thinking of as Fury berated them for stupidity and evaded acknowledging how much he didn’t tell them. As far as dressing downs went, he didn’t even think it was that bad. 

Everybody else shrunk from it, but Steve was too used to the _yes sir no sir of course sir yes I’m an idiot sir_ to mind. He liked Fury, and he’d liked Phillips. 

He hadn’t had any trouble lying to either of them. Or any of the others, even if Romanoff gave him some unreadable look, her face back to porcelain perfect when they rode back up, freshly dressed-down for fucking up. 

But her eyes were flashing, the way they always did when they were calculating, either the right tone of voice or the trajectory of a bullet. 

He kept meaning to ask what they were made of, if they were implants or simply modifications. But then again, it was a dangerous thing, inviting conversation with a woman like Romanoff, the two of them alone in the elevator. 

Rumlow was having his guys run laps and then the recordings, to figure out how to stop it from happening again. Steve knew sometimes the day just went badly. 

Especially when operating in the dark. 

“Expensive mycotoxin. For an office drone,” Romanoff said, looking at him, not a single part of her face moving. Except her eyes. 

“Oh, really?” Steve said, trying to sound casual. And a little dumb. If anyone had made him, it would have been her. 

But then again, most people thought the AI was flawless. He thought they both knew better.

It could just be an intel screw-up. 

“I’ll give you a class, one of these days” she said, just as they reached the exit. Her eyes never left his as she walked out, head twisting too far over her shoulder. 

Nice to confirm his suspicion that something had been done to her neck, her spine, too. All of her, probably. 

Steve met her stare and pointedly didn’t touch the little plastimetal disc in his pocket. 

He didn’t do it for blocks, walking away from the building into the dank and twisting streets. Instead, he let his eyes wander, over the neon signs promising love and success, and the people they kept lying to. 

He’d only walked this particular stretch of roads once before, but it was enough for his memory. He knew that his thick file, still half on paper from a combination of bureaucracy, secrecy and laziness, said it was from Erskine. But he’d had it before that. 

It used to be a game, for him and Bucky, the way he’d flash him columns and funny pages before having Steve recite them back from memory. He didn’t think they made those anymore. 

And suddenly he had to stop, grab a grimy pipe that wobbled dangerously in some nameless building’s crumbling facade and try not to heave onto his shoes. 

The grief in him was alive, like a writhing snake, and sometimes it bit so suddenly his air supply vanished. 

Nobody around him stopped to help as he breathed heavily, trying not to hurl onto the filthy pavement. It wasn’t that kind of place. That kind of country, if he was honest. 

Everything was different now. 

As suddenly as it washed over him, the wave of grief passed. He could breathe, and move. 

Just like that, Steve was just tired, down to the bone, and the tiny plastimetal disk was starting to dig into his skin. 

He shoved a hand in his pocket and dislodged it. He just ran the tips of his fingers along its sides, didn’t risk pulling it out. 

There was a chance he was far from spying eyes, but a low one. There was going to be a SHIELD bigwig meeting in less than a week; things were tight and tense.

It had been implied he’d be trotted out to meet them, like the dancing bear he’d been a long time ago. It was going to suck the entire time. Especially after that scrub job of a mission. 

For all that and more, his cinder block cell of an apartment, likely kitted up to the eyes in surveillance tech, and the neighbors paid off besides, didn’t appeal right now. 

So he went to Sam’s. 

That’s how he thought of the noodle place, anyway, haphazardly jammed between leaning buildings crumbling into each other, the lights flickering as the pots boiled. Whatever went into making the noodles was pretty good though, and Steve never bothered to ask exactly what the protein in it was. 

The roofs around it were so slanted and cluttered that it was easy to step back behind the android manning the stand, out of the sightline of the dark-haired girl that ran everything and god knows what else from the back, folded on the dirty floor and wreathed in wires, and up, the paper container sweating grease into his palms. 

The stand didn’t have a name, as far as Steve knew, but Sam did. 

It had been where they met, his only possible friend in these times, someone who brought to mind the Commandos. 

But not Buck. No one could ever be him again.

Still, that was easier to deal with somewhere familiar, on the unevenly tiled roof surrounded by filthy pigeons. And away from prying eyes, both organic and not. 

He had been sitting there, hidden in the lee of two buckling walls, when he’d first met Sam. ‘Met’ might be a generous term. Steve had mostly been lurking in the shadows, glad to be out of the unstoppable onslaught of light and color of the modern world, when he noticed Sam, hauling himself up on the rooftop, the way Steve usually did. 

The orange display of his holo flickered with the effort, but Sam was nothing if not determined. Under the fabric of his shirt, Steve saw the flat bulk of something, straight and solid lines, clearly grafted on his back, hunched over the lip of concrete lined with wires as Sam stared into the streets below. 

Nothing but an implant could be that steady. 

Even though Sam's shoulders kept rolling back, like he was trying to adjust to the weight. 

"On your left" Steve had whispered, half to be polite and half to be an ass, enjoying how Sam jumped and whirled, the orange glaze of his holo jumping to life and zeroing in. 

"Motherfucker. You're Captain America!'' he'd said at last. 

Since then they'd been something like friends, chatting idly about street gangs and sports and avoiding asking each other why, exactly, they were hanging out on a crumbling rooftop to begin with. No luck though, not today. 

The stand looked even more desolate than normal, disturbingly damp after the pass of a sheet of grey rain, the android's arm movements even more stilted. And no Sam on the roof, the pigeons looking especially scrawny and patchy. 

He ate the noodles without tasting them. And finally pulled the disc out into the light. 

It didn't look special. Round and not very thick, no obvious grooves or ports or chips to interact with. It hadn't set off any detection, so far. 

And stamped on its surface a design, one that Steve's thumb had put together in his head on the flight, rubbing it over and over. Enough to make him keep this to himself. 

A skulled octopus cut into the surface. HYDRA. 

The same as it had been nearly a century ago, and practically yesterday for Steve. 

He rolled it across his knuckles, weighed it in his palm. 

A man had died for this, hand spasming in Steve's as he'd reached for Romanoff. Heavy enough to know it was more than just a token, but not much else. 

Just the very bad sign it was. 

He sighed and put it back in his pocket. The smallest one, in his pants, weighing heavy against his skin. 

Tomorrow he'd tell them he'd only just noticed it. Maybe. He hadn't decided yet. 

He started to draw up, already exhausted at the thought of trying to sleep in the narrow cot in the concrete apartment they'd assigned him. 

Then one of the pigeons struck him with a sudden stare of its beady eye, entirely too knowing. 

It was enough to keep him from standing to his full height for a moment, just low enough so that the bullet aimed at his head struck the wall behind him, the shards of it exploding outward, running down his neck and clipping his ear.


	3. Chapter 3

Steve didn't even think to run; his body was already in motion without consulting him. 

He vaulted over the crowded rooftops, kicking up a spray of loose rocks and gobs of tar, darting behind neon billboards and swinging from browning and limp hanging gardens. His mind had traced an escape route from all the details he hadn’t consciously spent months memorizing. 

Bullets traced lines around him, screaming close but without touching. Whoever was behind him was good - the best he’d seen in this century. But still not as good as Steve, not as primed to survive from years of childhood that looked like he would never live long enough to grow up, much less fight and win a war. 

And now, he was stronger and faster and smarter than ever, healing so fast that as he pivoted on his heel into a narrow alley, his hand came up on its own to flick away the sliver of concrete and found the skin of his ear already scabbing over. 

It bled again, a little, the wound congealing before the new stream of blood reached his neck. 

He barely felt the way the wire in his face had lit up, searching, a hard vein of light digging into his cheek bone. When he noticed distantly, he chalked it up to habit. 

His men weren’t with him now. 

As he ran, the conscious part of his mind caught up with him. If he kept going, he’d run out of road. Which might be his pursuer’s plan. 

A couple more hard turns and he’d hit the edge of the water, or the endless, lawless warren of Kowloon, where even he might never walk out again. Unless he acted now. 

And, anyway, Steve was always more of a doer than a runner. 

The narrow alley led right out onto the waterfront, lapping gently behind the bannisters, and he ran as straight as he could, feeling the presence of his pursuer behind him. 

As soon as the thin, flaking walls ended, he banked hard to the right. A couple steps and he jumped to grab the gaudy billboard he knew had to be there, going by how choked in screaming advertisements the shoreline was, to appeal to the pleasure cruises, floating casinos, and liquor-loaded dinghies. As soon as his hands closed on the grimy shellacked metal, he put his weight into it and pulled it down. 

He had just enough time to read the words stamped on it, WE WILL WIN THIS FIGHT, and to wonder just what war they’d put it up for. And how long it took to realize they had to end up leaving it, one way or another. Or if it wasn’t, actually, just some sort of cookie ad. 

And then the whole thing came down in a flurry of glass, neon and metal. 

He managed to swing his body away from the worst of the wreckage and turned in the air to activate his holoshield and hurl it behind him. 

Steve landed on his feet, feeling victorious. Just in time to see the one thing that truly, after waking up in a bizarre new century, stunned him. 

The holoshield flew out straight and true, like he’d planned it, right into the specter’s outstretched metal hand. It clanged like a bell. Like they’d planned it. 

There was, just for a moment, absolute silence. 

If there had been anyone on the street, they’d scared them off. 

Over a black mask, the ghoul’s eyes were blue. Then he hurled the shield back and Steve almost stood to let it hit him. 

For the first time in a very long time, he felt he might die, and soon. The wire in his face _ached_ like it hadn’t in years. Like the Commandos were next to him again, instead of in their graves. 

But the part of him that refused to back down even when he was already beaten and curled on the ground with a boot trying to find his ribs, flicked his wrist to make sure it vanished like mist in front of his face. 

Then, like a dance, they both slipped, ready, into combat stance. 

He’d been wrong before. 

The dark stranger didn’t want him dead, or he would be. He wanted something else. 

If it was even a he and not some combat bot, outfitted with stunning eyes. 

But no android fought like that. The tech, even now, wasn’t there yet. Not that it mattered. 

He was metal enough, and he might kill Steve yet. 

The thought was almost thrilling. It made him fight harder, made his blood sing in his veins. He felt alive. 

And then, from somewhere behind him, he heard his name in the midst of a string of angry Russian, growling engine noises and moving water. 

On the waves was Romanoff, probably calling him an idiot. She had before. 

What happened next all happened very quickly. 

Romanoff fired off a grenade from the moldy-looking probably stolen houseboat she was driving, too close to shore for regulation.

For a moment, even after the blast and the ghost gone along with it, they looked at each other across the distance. Absently, he noted that Romanoff had a mane of hair wild around her in a way she never allowed. 

“Rogers!” she screamed and it was enough to trust. He vaulted off the concrete into the water. 

Bullets streaked down around him, the specter either recovered or came with backup. They sank beside him, just missing, spiraling with little white trails as he tugged off his jacket and pulled himself through the murky black water onto the boat Romanoff had commandeered from some poor soul. 

She barely waited for him to flop onto the deck to gun the squealing engine in a cloud of diesel smoke. 

“What’s happening?” he asked, and her pinched face flicked to him. It was frozen that way, he realized, halfway between expressions. 

At the corner of her jaw, where it met her neck, there was a small broken tube, spitting out gobs of something a little like silvery oil. 

Her eyes were still bright and focused though, at least, no matter what else might have broken. 

“Fury’s dead” she said and before he could process it, she added “I think, anyway. He got shot, bad. We were ambushed”. Then she turned the wheel so hard Steve slipped on the wet, briny deck and barely managed to not clip his nose on the metal handles on the way down. 

Behind them, there was a small _plip_ and a loud gush of water shooting upward as whatever explosive that had been hurled at them missed. Whoever was shooting had bad aim. 

Steve bit back the remark, along with a dozen questions. He’d asked her for details later, if they lived. Maybe not even then. 

“We’re not gonna outrun them in this,” he said instead, because it was clear they’d decided to cut their losses and kill them both. At least he knew how he ranked in their list of priorities. 

“No,” Romanoff said and banked hard again. The engine gave them an ominous whine and cough. But they were still moving. 

“Okay” Steve said, holding on to the slick, rusty railings behind Romanoff, ready to play along “so what’s the plan?” 

“We stay alive” she said, a part of her face moving oddly, almost pixelated. 

It took longer, every time she spoke, to snap back. 

Her neck was covered in whatever fluid was leaking from her. Unthinking, Steve reached out, delicately, and used his thumb and forefinger to tuck the tube back. The pixels smoothed. 

“Thanks,” she said, part of her lips quirking in a smile, as much as she could manage. It looked mostly like a grimace, in the end. 

They gathered speed, Steve praying to whoever was listening to keep the engine in one piece. And that he wouldn’t slip right onto his face. 

He was concentrating so hard that he almost didn’t hear Romanoff’s pleased noise, almost lost under the rumble of the splintering boards of the boat. 

Then her chin jerked forward, stretching a little too far. In front of them, growing ever closer there was an algae festooned stone pillar, some remnant of a forgotten bridge or of condemned buildings long since surrendered to the rising tides. 

“Ah. Gotcha” Steve said. His back was already aching in anticipation. 

“Glad to see you catch up,” she said, and spun the wheel a final time. 

The creaky little boat hit the pillar at the perfect angle, it’s engine dying with a wheeze on impact. 

They hit right on the bow, their craft cracking in half and sinking fast. 

To anyone looking, it would have looked like she’d tried to turn and lost control. 

And in the dark water, his arms around Romanoff, back aching from breaking their fall, Steve felt her strong, smooth little fingers pry open his mouth. 

The taste was metallic and acrid, and the grasping little pincers of a rebreather cut the roof of his mouth as they latched on. 

The taste of blood didn’t go away even when it closed, just turned it clotted and heavy as he breathed, carefully, feeling it filter the murk into air. 

Romanoff’s eyes lit the way, in a diseased-looking orange glow, something that brought to mind protean deep sea creatures as they dragged themselves along the sludgy muck of the river bed. 

Something like the gargantuan olive brown catfish, distorted into monsters in Steve’s water blurred vision. They kept jostling them, slick bulk slamming into them as they swam, unbothered by their intrusion. 

At least they didn’t think of the two of them as potential meals. 

Then the contaminated silt gave way to brick dust and stones, slowly growing graffiti and yellowed posters and Steve knew exactly where they were. Coney Point. 

When he was alive the first time around, he and Bucky had taken the train for hours to come and ride the rides and pretend they were going to play the carnival games even though they hadn’t even had enough money for the trip back home. 

It had collapsed into the waves while Steve was dead to the world. 

They trudged out of the water, sloshing around their thighs, into the dim space that it had carved out when it sunk. 

The rush of the water echoed in the artificial cavern. There was enough light for him to see part of the lighthouse was still there, enough to climb out onto the wreckage-dotted sands the locals called the Sunken City, even though the light still hit it. Well, some parts of it. 

“Don’t worry,” Romanoff rasped, sitting on something that could be a rock or the remains of a bygone attraction, maybe even a novelty trash can. 

The tube was sticking back out of her face, plastered to her neck with mud, bleeding whatever it was that was coming from it steadily now, eased by the water. 

“If we have time, I’ll let you ride the Ferris wheel” and she laughed with a metallic scraping sound, as she pulled off her boots and poured the water and seaweed out.


	4. Chapter 4

They made sure to scout along the perimeter, and check the structural soundness of the ground, before picking an abandoned carnival stall, lilting, but steady, to hole up in. 

There was a clown on it, smiling through pink lips and holding out a unicorn shaped prize. 

“I might have played for some of these,'' Steve said pointing at the moldy remnants of what could have been stuffed bears, once. At the very least, they weren’t unicorns. 

“For a girl you were sweet on?” Romanoff teased, but it was off, her voice more ground down by the minute. It reminded Steve of the old women on his block, long gone now, with gruff tones made rougher by smoke. 

He hadn’t heard a voice like that in a while. Nobody even smoked cigarettes anymore. Just electric things, which didn’t seem all that different. Better smell, maybe. Candy and apples and cola, even if it was still bad for your lungs. 

She was wrong, anyway. There’d never been a girl. No matter what the propaganda said. Bucky’d been his best guy, always. Still was. 

“Tell me what happened. To Fury,” Steve said.

“Ooh, touchy subject? Now you may not know a lot about women, but no girl will let a guy watch her put her face on,” she said with a wiggle of her fingers, already silvered and sharp in the shape of the tools she’d need.

He sighed and turned, scraping against the gritty floor, feeling her back relax minutely against his as they sat in the near dark. 

“We were talking about you,” she said, and it felt like it was just gossip, idle chit-chat while they ate pirozhki and watched ships in the bay. 

It’s disarming. Like she must have planned this. Romanoff’s good at what she does, after all. 

"Anything good?" He said, not quite sounding light. 

"How you're a shit liar, Rogers," she said with a metallic grunt as she twisted her body in time with her work. It felt a little like having an angry python behind him.

He wondered what she's doing exactly. Of course, if he _were_ a good liar, a spy, he'd already know and have a face like hers. 

"You weren't telling everything about the mission, we could tell-" she cut off with a hiss of air, like a leaky hose. 

Wordlessly, he pulled the disc from his pocket and handed it to her, over his shoulder. There's light now, coming from something. Too low to be her eyes. 

Romanoff snorted, handing it back, nail scraping against the HYDRA skull. It didn’t tarnish. 

She took a moment, and Steve heard a few leaky gasps behind him. A squeak. Then her voice, closer to what it should be, if a little breathless. "Yeah, we figured it was something. But no one thought you were double. You're not that guy." 

"Shit liar," Steve smiled. 

She didn’t know. He’d lied for years, easily -to his mother even - but it had been for love. For Bucky. 

“Anyway, the mission was screwy from the start. The AI intel wasn’t what it should be, something weird in the system. Nothing you’d understand,” he could hear the smile in her tone. 

“So there we were, deciding whether or not to wait you out, figure out what it was that you weren’t telling… And then he got shot,” Romanoff said, voice losing volume in a way that had nothing to do with the repairs she was working through. 

“Where were you?” Steve said, because something didn’t quite track. 

“An office. The bullets came through the damned wall. And they kept coming. It was chaos,” Romanoff said, “and not the kind I usually enjoy”. 

“How did you find me then?” Steve asked. It had started to nag at him. At first he’d thought Romanoff had just picked up the trail of mayhem left by the boogeyman chasing him, that she’d already been tailing him, if Fury had his suspicions. 

But now it looked like she’d been running on her own. A bad sign. 

“I’m a spy, a turned asset, that was alone with him when the shooting started. In a place it should have been impossible to get shot. Less than a week before the Security Summit. No one would’ve listened, so.” 

“I’m listening” he said, mostly to feel her snorting along the muscles of his back. A break from the soft vibration of gears slowly clicking back into their proper place. 

“I went out the window, by the way. Took a page from your book. You make it look easy” she added and now it was Steve’s turn to laugh. 

“Then I went to find you. Didn’t expect the ghost.” 

Steve could only shrug. It had been smart, getting rid of Fury and kicking up the hornet’s nest. Hunting him down in the ensuing pandemonium. 

Two birds with one stone, and a scapegoat neatly in hand. Until they hadn’t been. Romanoff would have noticed they’d been trying to take him alive, until they’d stopped. 

“The point is; we can’t trust SHIELD right now. Or anybody,” she replied, sounding almost normal. Fluid. 

“It’s just us,” Steve agreed. 

“Speak for yourself, I haven’t done anything to deserve any justice like this,” Romanoff said with a languid stretch. 

She offered her hand to help him up, face the same kind of perfect as a floating citywide ad again. There was nothing model-fragile about the way she yanked him up, though. 

Not for the first time, he wonders just how much of her is still organic. 

“Alright. I don’t know which mouth breather told you bringing a girl to a carnival was a good date idea, but they didn’t mean this one. Let’s go,” she said. 

“Sure” he agreed, stretching.

“Quick question though. Where?” he tried to sound funny. It didn’t quite land. 

“Aren’t _you_ The Star-Spangled Man With The Plan?” she teased, but he saw it wore on her too. 

“Just us, right?” she asked and Steve nodded. “Then there’s something else I should show you,” she said, and lifted her shirt. 

It was more of a shock to realize it looked mostly normal, not the porcelain eeriness of her face or meshed strands of metal. By her warped, stunningly imperfect belly button, there was the hard, raised keloid of a maroon and puce-colored scar. 

It was clear it had never been touched by electric stitch machines, sewing skin back together like it had never been broken. It reminded Steve of a long time ago. 

Of his own body, before Erskine’s metal chamber and blue light in his veins. 

“A gift from your ghost. The same one he gave Fury,” she said, not quite meeting his eyes. Steve wanted to touch it, knew she wouldn’t take that well. 

“If you want there to be an us, I need you to quit the riddles,” he said, swallowing hard. The phantom ache in his facewire was back, a dull throb to how alive it had felt earlier. 

“Most of the intelligence community doesn't even believe he exists. But the ones who do call him the Winter Soldier. Because nothing’s left alive after he comes through. He's credited with over two dozen assassinations in the last sixty years.” She looked up, eyes working frantically to scan around them, the lights expanding and contracting. 

Not something she found easy to talk about. Steve could wait, could believe. He was proof life was stranger than fiction more often than not. 

“Five years ago...he gave me this.'' Her fingers danced like restless spiders over the scar, not quite touching. 

“I was escorting a nuclear engineer out of the Ayatollah’s grasp when somebody shot out my tires just as we were crossing the Soviet border into Odessa. We lost control, went straight over a cliff, I pulled us out, but the Winter Soldier was there. I was covering the engineer, so he shot him straight through me. Great War Era slug, no rifling. Bye-bye bikinis.'' She grinned like a skull. 

“Oh yeah, you must look terrible in them now,” Steve said. Great War Era rounds. They were banned now, they impacted too hard and broke apart inside. Inhumane even for weapons of war. 

No wonder the machines hadn’t been able to fix her further. Even synthskin wouldn’t take as a cover-up, with the way the metals would’ve leached into the tissue. It probably still hurt. 

“I don’t need proof that he’s real. I need to find him. Because whoever’s behind him is gonna be behind this,” he said, holding up the little disc. 

It flickered in a way it hadn’t before and he frowned. Romanoff’s face froze again, for just a moment. 

Carefully, she held her hand out, fingers slitted down to sharp knives. Steve dropped it, and watched how her fingers spasmed. 

Carefully, making sure not to cut himself, Steve slid it off her palm and watched her shake her hands out, like it was full of pins and needles. 

“Localized EMP. Ish. Close enough,” she said darkly, rubbing her thumb on her palm. 

“A neat off switch, sure,” Steve agreed. 

“Rogers-'' she sighed. “Sometimes I almost manage to forget you weren’t born in this century. That’s...crazy. Enough to shut just what you want off, but not the rest of the system. None of the alarms that should’ve gone off for me did. And…” She rubbed her thumb harder. 

If the skin of her hands were real, it would have been raw by now. 

“There was the beginning of a data download. I’m not sure what. But I got a little chunk and I’m noticing _now_. I don’t have more because it wasn’t _for me_. It stopped itself. Do you know what you could do with that thing? You don’t need a back door. It _is_ a back door. To anything. Anyone. It shouldn’t exist.”

“Ok,” Steve said and pocketed it. It didn’t scare him. 

He was fully organic, unless you counted the facewire, and it was so outdated by now almost no one did. 

She shook her head again. Locked her fingers behind her neck, where a dataport would have been, a generation or two ago. Superstition. 

How grandmothers warded off the evil eye. You couldn’t just cover the hole where the datastick went anymore. 

Not with something like the little disc weighing down his pocket. 

“Right,” she said, shaking her head like a dog shaking off water. They were rare, now. 

“We should go. Someone might have gotten pinged. Maybe even SHIELD,” she said, trying to sidestep the implication. 

“Sure. Where to?” he asked. All he knew, these days, were his cinder block apartment and the noodle place, and they were compromised. 

Her eyes spun in the dark, glowing and sparking. Steve was involuntarily reminded of the artificial owl he’d seen at the Stark Expo in 1943, failing right in front of him between displays of flying cars and self-guiding vacuums. It all must seem quaint now. 

“I don’t have enough data to run a full trace, but I think I have enough to go on.'' A little map flickered to life between her fingertips. The land was familiar, in a way Steve couldn’t quite place. But enough to know they were going to have to steal some form of transpo and not die trying. 

“So, _Steve_ , you feel like doing something stupid?” she asked, with her usual smile. Romanoff did love having a mission. 

So did he. “Natasha, I thought you’d never ask”.


	5. Chapter 5

The terminals for LRJAAX were disturbingly pristine. 

There wasn’t a single spot of dust, muddy boot print, or even a smell other than hot metal and lemon air freshener. 

All of that despite the fact that more than half a million people moved through it every day, jetting off to megalopoli all over the globe, gliding over the cratered wrecks of Old San Diego and the Pripyat Exclusion Zone like untouchable ghosts, on their way to Moscow and DF-CDMX. 

When Steve was a kid, that much gleaming metal and white-grey tiles, filling ample corridors on the way to jetting off, would’ve been an impossible dream. Not just the flying anywhere in a few hours bit. 

It was streamlined and swift, no one speaking above a polite murmur. 

It didn’t seem to matter that it wasn’t just rich corporate suits on the transpos, but everyone: from gang members joining members further afield, to day laborers being shuttled around to twitchy tech heads watching god-knows-what through their eye-implanted vid streams. 

The airways were their own law, a host unto themselves, and no one who wanted to fly crossed them. It didn’t matter if a gang member sat across a rival, or suits from infighting child-companies were in the same pod. 

There was no bloodshed in the building or the plane, unless you wanted to be thrown from one as an example - if not far worse. The whole industry depended on it. 

But the capture of wanted fugitives, before they boarded? _Without_ shooting any paying customers? That just might be fair game. Especially if they could spin it as being for their passengers' safety. 

Which was why Steve was trailing behind Natasha like a lost puppy, trying not to scratch at the collar of the suit they’d liberated from a drunken businessman. He could still smell the whiskey. He hoped it helped their cover. Natasha was walking the way she always did, without a care in the world. 

She smiled hugely at the man at the counter, booking a flight “for our honeymoon.” 

He blinked behind his beard, Aaron according to his name tag, then asked where to: “Pocatello, Idaho.” 

He instantly blurted, “Oh, you’re members of The Church? You don’t look it.” They probably didn’t, with the way she’d dressed them up. It was still crassly impolite. 

In an effort not to wince, he added that he had the same glasses Steve was wearing, stolen at some point by Natasha when he wasn’t looking. 

“Well look at that, you’re practically twins,” she said with a smile anyone would say was truly genuine and turned on her heel. Steve stumbled over his own feet to follow. 

The airport was a warren of people and passages, but she was moving like she knew the route by memory. Maybe she did. 

“So what’s the plan now? Are we hijacking one of these? Because it’s been a while, I might be a little rusty,” he said, too keyed up to contain himself. 

His missions had never been about stealth. That had been Bucky’s bag, melting into the Black Forest or the Ardennes, and reappearing a week later with intel and blood on his knife. 

Steve had never breathed easy when he was away. Sometimes he felt like he hadn’t taken in air since Bucky fell. 

But the instincts drilled into him never stopped, cataloguing everything around him no matter how minor. Enough to pick up Natasha’s snorting little laugh at him. Ungainly, for her, so probably genuine. 

Before he could reply, all he could do was breathe a quiet “fuck” when he noticed the real problem. 

In the shining metal, full of the fragmented reflections of the entire terminal, packed with colors and shouts, a standard tac-team. Rumlow among them, the expressive half of his face creased into a frown. His eyepiece was spinning so quickly it looked still. 

Two behind, two across, two coming straight at them. He had to assume she had spotted them too. The hardware in her wouldn’t miss it, much less her brain. 

“Natasha,” he hissed. “If they make us, I'll engage, you-” her hand tightened like a claw on his. “Shut the fuck up, put your arm around me and laugh like I’m as hilarious as ever. Now.” 

There was no choice but to do it, and watch how no one around them seemed to even see them. 

“You’re such a fucking soldier, Rogers,” she added, grinning like he’d said something flirty. 

There were only a few feet left to the final door, the one that would only open for their e-tickets, the one that would lock them onto a flight. And get them out of anyone else’s jurisdiction for as long as they were aboard. 

Right by it, moving like a loping wolf was Rumlow, black eye piece glittering like ice. He could almost hear it hum as it narrowed in on them. 

“Kiss me,” Natasha said with a twirl, right in his face. She wasn’t smiling now, not that anyone could see. 

His facewire twinged, maybe from his jaw dropping.

“Public displays of affection make people very uncomfortable,” she said and then her tongue was in his mouth and they were beyond the door. In the corner of his eye, he could see Rumlow looking away. 

Then the metal clicked closed behind them and a robotic voice informed them “ALL PASSENGERS ABOARD, PREPARE FOR DEPARTURE.” 

Pocatello wasn’t popular, no matter how key it was, or how many interests it bridged, and they were off. 

Steve leaned against the glass, ignoring the litany of flight details it offered up: their altitude, ground speed, wind speed, temperature, local time. He watched the city grow small and diffuse under a cloud of smog, the people vanishing. 

From this high up, no matter how tall the buildings were, San Fransokyo looked like a jagged scar on the Earth. He wasn’t sure if he liked it. At least the sky was beautiful, blue and clear. 

“When _did_ you learn how to hijack a plane?” Natasha asked, stretched out like a cat on the seats. She didn’t look like the smooth spy anymore. She only did that when it was convenient. 

“Nazi Germany.” It was true, though he’d never much gotten the hang of it. When he crashed, he’d really crashed. 

All the way into the future, which wasn’t what he’d ever thought. Not that he’d ever thought he’d even see a thirtieth birthday. Especially after he knew Bucky wouldn’t. 

Joke was on him, as ever. 

“Steve,” she said and he looked up, alerted at the tone. Maybe all of that had been written on his face.

“Was that your first kiss since 1945?” and he laughed. Genuinely. 

Maybe for the first time since that same year. It had only even been his second kiss with someone who wasn’t Bucky. And he wasn’t sure if Peggy counted. 

They’d been sure they were going to die - or Steve had been. It had been goodbye. 

“That’s a personal question,” he said. 

“So yes. You’re not bad, if you were wondering.” 

“I wasn’t but thanks. Let’s stay friends though,” he said, relaxing. It was a soldier’s habit. 

The bullets could start flying again any minute. You had to rest when you could. And give your teammates shit. 

“Is that what we are? I don’t have a lot of those,” she said, half sad. 

“Quality over quantity. Most of my life, I only had the one.” 

“And that landed you an entire museum exhibit on your epic friendship, let’s keep it realistic.” 

Steve flinched. It was hard, remembering that he had personal items, letters, drawings, pinned to walls behind glass, with handy holo descriptions and reenactments. Nothing compromising, those had all been burned in caution long before, but it still made him feel flayed. 

“Our friendship won’t make the books, don’t worry. A good spy never makes history.” She winked. Through her eyelid, the red disc of her eye glowed. 

Natasha was tracking their progress he knew, to their real destination. Even if she was still being cagy about how, exactly, she was going to get them there. 

“Alright. What’s the plan? Because even you won’t blend in Pocatello.” Even if it was the most outsider friendly location in the New State of The Church, there wasn’t enough air traffic to mask their arrival and they’d be spotted as outsiders very quickly. 

And without work or travel permits. 

“We’re jumping. And soon,” she said, standing with a stretch like a cat. A real one, not the manufactured no clawing, no shredding ones they had now.

Just like the ones Mrs. Shapiro had ten of, on his old block. You could smell her for miles. 

“C’mon, I know you’ve jumped out of a plane before,” she said, pulling at the seams of the seats. 

“They're going to notice we didn’t arrive,” Steve said, mostly to be contrary. He was still thinking about the cats. 

They would have been dead for about a century, but he could still hear them, yowling bloody murder from the windows. 

“Doesn’t mean they’ll care. We paid, and so long as the plane is still flying, we won’t even be a blip.” 

“Will the plane still be flying?” 

“Between your bad luck and my good I’d say there’s a good chance. Now give me a hug big guy,” she said, and the second his arms were around her waist, her wrist seized the shield controls on his wrist, letting the shield hum to life on his back. 

Then her other hand was in the door frame, and it slid open. 

The icy wind made him alive and dead all over again. 

He was here and it was now. 

He was there, ready to glide onto a speeding train with Bucky by his side and it was then. 

Natasha smiled against his neck. Her fingers dug into his shoulders, the momentum impossible to stop, and they were falling through the clouds. 

Squinting, he could see the gleaming bead of their plane, silver and perfect and moving away at speed. For a moment, everything felt suspended. 

He almost wished he could stay. 

Then he felt the fall again, and the rough jar of his teeth and bone as they hit the earth in a sudden cloud of orange dust. 

“Welcome to Las Vegas,” Natasha said with a smile. “What’s left of it, anyway,” she said, and they were off. 

Steve didn’t tell her he’d been there, on a Victory Tour, ages ago. When it was alive instead of nuked and swallowed by the sands. 

He could see bits of what had been here, years ago, the ziggurat-like ruins of the buildings. 

Now all he could think was of Ozymandias, read by nasal Mrs. Richards in grade school. 

And Bucky, snow in his hair, telling him he owed him the trip, how could Steve have gone without him. Saying, when the War was over, Steve should treat him with the works: happy hour, dinner, and a show.


	6. Chapter 6

The air tasted like dust when Steve finally managed to pry open the door to the abandoned lobby. 

It must have been a hotel, once upon a time, going by the now faded into pink carpet and the statues. Greek-themed, he guessed. On the wall, there had been a mosaic. From the bits left, it could have been an orgy. Or the Maenads tearing Orpheus to pieces. Maybe both at once. 

“You’re sure?” Natasha asked, shaking sand from her hair, as she slid in behind him. She was careful. 

Snakes weren’t extinct, after all, and venom wasn’t good for any of the fluids in her. When she was sure of her footing, she smiled up at him in the dim, cool air. 

The light seemed far away, at the end of the half tunnel they’d made. 

“Army regulations forbid storing ammunition within five hundred yards of the barracks,” he replied. It had been labelled outside, on what must have been a floor tall enough to spot from the street as repurposed lodging, when the military had taken over the town. 

They’d blown it up, later, too. At least they’d had the decency to have it evacuated first. 

That had been during one of the Corporate Wars, as far as he knew. Not his time. 

But the regulations hadn’t changed, he’d checked, and right by the first sign had been munitions too, and in the same faded print - not a change of heart later on.

Even if he was wrong, they needed a place to stay, and get out of the sun, away from whatever still lived here, their little eyes pricking the back of his neck from the dunes.

Nature thrived where men didn’t. He’d never been more glad he hadn’t served in Africa. Too pale for it. Even with the serum in his veins he burned fast. 

Something for Bucky and the boys to tease him over. 

He’d never minded, later, at night and in the dark of a musty tent, Bucky had always run careful fingers over his sunburns. Then his lips. 

He shook off the memory, not missing her curious and narrowed eyes. 

Steve and Natasha tramped down the elegant stairs into what must have been a lounge, open, lined with a bar. Or Steve tramped and Natasha trailed him, seeing if he set off any traps. 

It had been stripped years ago, from the drag marks on the floor and the sand starting to trickle in at the corners. And there was a heap of wood that might have been a piano once. 

It was more valuable than diamonds, now, so no one had been here in ages. 

Perched on the remains of the bar, the glass glittering behind her, Natasha cleared her throat. “This is a dead end. Zero heat signature, zero waves, not even radio. Probably some kind of proxy ping. But-” 

Steve turned sharply. Something about it was nagging him. If she’d found a trap it would be evidence, wouldn’t it? Why rig something worthless? 

“-We’ve got Elvis,'' she finished and slammed her hand down on some control behind the bar.

The sound roared to life, but didn’t materialize into music, as a ghostly Elvis hologram flickered in and out of life, shimmying his hips like he hadn’t even been dead for a day. 

Sand shook down the wall, pouring from what must be the speakers. 

The noise almost turned to music for a moment, as flashes of red and blue kicked up from dancers floating in the air, where there must have been tables, once upon a time. 

There was a screech, and Steve winced. 

Elvis smiled at him and opened his mouth, not matching the words coming from the cleared speakers. “Welcome back to the land of the living, Captain Rogers. And Miss Romanoff, Natalia Alianovna.” The voice was familiar and for a moment, Steve didn’t remember he’d never actually listened to Elvis. 

He lit his shield and motioned for Natasha to come closer. She pointed at the projector beam for Elvis. Wouldn’t be odd for it to double as a camera. 

“It's some kind of a recording,” Natasha said, but she didn’t look sure. Her hands had morphed into claws. 

Elvis laughed, even as he wailed into the microphone. “I am not a recording, Fräulein. I may not be the man I was when the Captain took me prisoner in 1945, but I am,” he said, and Elvis' face flickered, even as his body danced. When he turned, sudden and stiff like he’d only now noticed his audience, Steve put the voice to the new face. “Arnim Zola.” 

“Who-” 

“Arnim Zola was a German scientist who worked for the Red Skull. He's been dead for years,” Steve replied robotically himself. It felt like a bad joke. The one living remnant of his past was something he would rather see burned and buried, seven feet deep. 

The hologram chuckled, moving its hands in a way that was intimately familiar and infuriating. Steve had seen it for the first time through the glass into an interrogation room, only barely stopping himself from stepping inside and ripping Zola to shreds like the Bacchae on the mural outside. 

“First correction-” buzzed the hologram, attached to what had to be an unseen artificial brain, “I am Swiss. Second, I have never been more alive. It is true that I received a terminal diagnosis. But the death of the body is irrelevant in the face of the life of the mind. Beneath your feet, threaded throughout this building, are two hundred thousand feet of data banks and wires. You are, in a manner of speaking, standing in my brain,” the hologram said. 

He finished with a flourish of high kicking showgirls, cheering him on. Their colors were Hydra red and green, now. One sparkling ruby heel clipped through Steve’s shoulder. The meaning wasn’t lost on him. 

“How in the fuck did you even get here?” Steve said, more to himself than anyone else. 

Natasha ‘s eyes were darting everywhere, spinning wildly, dilating and contracting. They’d have to bring the whole building down, to shut him up. 

“They invited him in, Steve,” Natasha said. “It was Operation Paperclip after World War II. They recruited German scientists with strategic value. Split them up during the Corporate Wars.” 

Steve shook his head hard. Fuck them, all of them. War hadn’t taught them to stop, just to fight dirtier. 

“Shouldn’t matter. HYDRA died with the Red Skull,” he said, willing it to be true. It wasn’t, of course. 

“You of all people should know, Captain. Cut off one head, two more shall take its place,” said Zola, splitting into three. The showgirls cheered, four legs to each torso. Then they stopped. 

And turned to face them, grins fixed and forced. 

When the digital ghosts rushed him, he still put his shield up, even though they vanished right through it. As they did, they morphed. 

Steve saw it all, wishing he hadn't, couldn't, that it wasn’t there to see. 

For a moment, the telling almost too much for his mind to fathom. But there it was, plain and clear and painful, burrowing inside him, roosting, a festering infection. It felt like Zola whispering in his ear, cloyingly and lyingly soothing, the way he must have when he slipped needles under Bucky’s skin. 

Once he’d screamed so loud in his sleep, and vomited after, that he barely had a thread of a voice to whisper to Steve in, to confess that one of the worst things had been that Zola had told him that Bucky made him proud. 

HYDRA was founded on the belief that humanity could not be trusted with its own freedom. The new HYDRA had grown, leeching on its host, a parasite inside SHIELD. As Steve slept, HYDRA grew strong, secretly feeding crisis, reaping war. 

Little quirks in the AI, small enough to go unnoticed. Those few, those Steve loved, when they tried to see it and stop it, to notice the discrepancies, were pruned like leaves on the vine, the root ever more poisonous. 

With every conflict, big and small, every shortage, every lopped off limb replaced by steel and glass, HYDRA created a world so chaotic that they were at last on the cusp of it. 

Their glory, a world remade in their image… as soon as the purification process was complete. 

And Steve was standing there, surrounded by ghouls made of light, as if he’d never lived at all. 

He couldn’t see Natasha, hoped she was close. 

Steve threw the shield, watching the orange glow rip apart the visions and slam into the wall. The phantoms were gone. 

“An expected display,” said Zola’s voice, calm as ever. He whirled, breathing heavily, to see him behind the bar, in what must have been the uniform, years ago. As his face spoke, the borrowed body went through the motions, empty-handed, to prepare a glass of something complicated. 

“As I was saying…'' and Steve hurled the shield again. 

It felt good to watch the vision rip in half, even as it appeared again, as the maître d', at the missing tables, and back to the bar.

Natasha’s hand wrapped around his arm, as the other snaked into his pants. She held up the disc like a sword. 

“You can’t skip away from this. It’s lights out, forever. What’s the plan?” she sounded calm. It was a lifeline back. 

“Fräulein, I admire your bravery. It is truly Aryan, and as such, I shall give you your just reward. Ponder, what does such a device allow? A scalpel, as opposed to a hammer. The surgery shall remove the tumor, and give life to the patient. I can only lament you will be too dead to see it,” Zola said and flickered back across the room as Elvis, dancing in triumph. 

In the distraction, a robotic arm snatched the device away. It was a little slow from age as it cranked back into its mechanism, but Natasha was too concerned with the information coming to her now that its dampening effect was gone.

A side effect Zola had anticipated. 

“A missile,” Natasha said grimly. “Short range ballistic. 30 seconds tops,” she added, looking him right in the eye. They’d gone black and flat in her face. 

“I am afraid I have been stalling, Captain,” said Zola, working his hips on stage. “Admit it, it's better this way,” he added as he began to dance with the now headless showgirls. “We're both of us...out of time.” The dancers threw their arms out for the finale, as Steve took Natasha into his.

Outside, the missile struck the edge of the building and the blast flared. It all came down, crashing into the long irradiated sand. 

The desert swallowed it all with a roar, and silence.


	7. Chapter 7

It was raining hard in the Visitacion-Fillmore district of the city of San Fransokyo. 

It was part the weather and part the design, the narrow streets too close to the bay funneling in wind and water. It was dark, not enough ads or neon to keep the area as bright as the rest of the city, the electric signs too quickly fried in the damp for it to be worth keeping too many. 

The residents joke that it was easy to sleep - and wake up being carried away by the tide. 

Sam Wilson’s apartment was dusk-dark, as he sat and looked at the ceiling, watching the cracks and leaks. 

He should get up, but some days were easier than others. He couldn’t stand the thunder anymore. 

Not when he’d flown in it, born up by the currents of the storms. 

He flinched at the knock, and went for the stun rod he kept concealed in his sleeve as his visor dropped down over his eyes, projected from the opal yellow implant by his temple. 

Better safe - not that he was. Not since he’d joined up and gone under their knife, Riley smiling beside him. 

Through the orange glow, he could see all the odds and angles tallied up. There was a pang of pain, echoing through parts at his back he didn’t even have, as he flicked his eyes automatically to the numbers at the upper left, the calculations needed to fly. 

He didn’t call out, letting the visor sync up to the fish eye in the flimsy fake wood. And then he scrambled to open the door. 

Sheepish and damp, dust and sand an inch thick in their hair, was Captain America, Steve, and a woman he’d seen around him before. 

She walked like a lot of professionals he’d known. 

“Hey, man” he hazarded. Steve sighed, relieved and embarrassed. 

It had been a long shot. And might require explaining he’d had Natasha check out his information. Sam had never given him this address, after all. 

“I’m sorry about this, and you can tell us to fuck off but, we need a place to lie low-” “Because everyone we know is trying to kill us,” she finished, fixing him with a stare. 

Her eyes spun in place, sending little ripples along his visor. They weren’t armed, in any way that mattered, and no one probably cared enough to want Sam dead, let alone enough to send Captain America himself. He blinked, and let the visor fall away. 

“Not everyone,” he said and stepped aside to let them in. If they didn’t like his place, they wouldn’t say it. Even Sam didn’t like his place. 

Steve wiggled his fingers at his boots. “Mind if I?” 

“Knock yourself out, man,” Sam said. It had been a long time since he’d been in the middle of something like this, whatever it was. He’d missed it. He’d said so once to Steve, above a noodle joint. Probably more than once, when they broke out the soju. 

Steve pulled the shoes off, gingerly, and out poured a mix of sand and mud and pebbles. At least one had worn a little hole into the side of his foot and he dug it out. 

It was green enough that it might be trinitite. A collector’s item that could buy Sam’s dingy apartment a thousand times over, Steve was almost sure. 

It would be a good apology for Steve’s stringy milk-white toes on his mostly clean floor.

“C’mon” Natasha said, running a hand through his hair, shaking sand into his eyes, before grabbing and practically dragging him into Sam’s coffin of a bathroom. 

Her hands still surprised him with how strong they were. 

There was no awkwardness between them, especially not after what they’d survived. He was a soldier and she was close enough, grabbing Sam’s eerily well-stocked medkit they patched each other up without any shame or flinching. 

It’s not as bad as it could have been. 

The sand had saved them, wrapping them safely until it had tried to choke them. 

When he’d told her about Sam, on the way back, she’d nodded. Followed him once or twice and checked him out. On her own, not logged anywhere. 

A good record, she said, our kind of guy. She was a Howlie at heart. 

They took turns in the shower, carefully looking away, as much as they could manage. It was the principle of the thing. 

“You okay?” he asked, trying to towel off her hair, as she realigned metal along her spine, click by click. 

“I’m alive. I can figure the rest out.” 

“You don’t have to do it alone,” he said, gently. He didn’t have to, either, he realized. Dumb luck, maybe. 

“Just us, right? Even if I couldn’t figure out whose lies I was telling. Some spy,” she said, turning to face him.

Her face looked more artificial than he’d ever seen it, even when it had cracked. 

“There's a chance you might be in the wrong business,” he said and they laughed together. Sam knocked carefully on the door. 

“I warmed up some food. It’s not much but...I figure you guys eat.” 

Steve shrugged. 

“Do you?” Natasha punched his arm and they trooped into the next room, sitting on the floor in a rough circle. 

Protein packs, which tasted like dust and mildew, just the tiniest hint of something else enough to keep you going. 

MREs hadn’t changed much in the time Steve had been under. It was a shame. And almost nostalgic. 

Part of that was how easy it was between them, companionable in the way only war ever was, like they were waiting for a shelling in a foxhole. He was almost sure they didn’t have those anymore. 

He let Natasha do most of the talking. She was far better at it. Steve was still working on wrapping his own head around it all. 

For his part, Sam nodded along to the story, like he was almost expecting it. Maybe that was just paranoia. Maybe it was just that there wasn’t much shock left after Captain America showed up as a fugitive on your doorstep. Or maybe Sam had seen a little too much of the armed forces and their underbelly. 

“The real question, though, is who’s calling the shots. Fury’s gone, and they probably pulled your miracle device from the wreckage. But if you know the man, you know the angle,” Sam said and Steve and Natasha looked at each other. 

They’d been avoiding that. But there was only one name: Alexander Pierce. 

He was famous for being mostly organic even these days, handsome, honest, the last boy scout. Second in line, after Fury. 

And Steve had hated him from day one and had never been able to say why. 

Call it the way his smile never reached his eyes. And the way he would put his hand on Steve’s shoulder, like Steve was a dog he was bringing to heel, a pet. Steve was sorry he’d never punched him. 

“We can’t just walk up and ask him what’s going on. Right now he’s sitting on top of the most secure building cum bunker in the world, surrounded by the best troops around. Us excluded,” Natasha said. 

Pierce’s signature had been on the op sign off, the one with the unwitting courier that had handed Steve the disc and had his brain melted down inside his skull. 

Dead men tell no tales, and it wasn’t supposed to be in Steve’s hands but Natasha’s to turn it in.

He must have gotten impatient, or scared, or both, enraged besides, and decided on the nuclear option to get it back. It meant he was on a clock, and they could leverage that. 

“We can’t just storm in there in broad daylight. Not when we don’t have the whole puzzle,” Steve said and Natasha frowned, like she was working on a way in. 

Steve would be glad to hear it. The only unguarded entrances were the flood gates at the river bed, to let the water in as a last resort. Kill your enemies alongside yourself, a Steve sort of plan, which should be the Hail Mary option. 

In the silence, someone cleared their throat. 

“You can’t, but you can break in here,” Sam said, and projected an image from his visor. A place Steve recognized. 

The biggest, gaudiest, ugliest building downtown, headquarters for Hanka, Tyrell and Stark. 

The bubbly HTS on the side always made the artist in Steve want to scream. 

Natasha’s eyes narrowed: “How did you know SHIELD has servers there?”. 

It was more like a hidden archive, weaved into the data. 

“I didn’t, I knew these are,” and the vision shifted neatly to a pair of wings. Then to Sam wearing them. 

“Consider it my resume,” he added and Natasha whistled. 

“That’s how you lost your partner,” Steve said, remembering. They’d talked around it, some nights. Loss. Staring out at the damp lit up city, smelling of noodles and undetermined grease. 

Sam said Riley the same way Steve couldn’t say Bucky. 

“And then they took them,” Sam said, and showed them his back. He didn’t have a hunch, like it would seem to untrained eyes, looking at him in the neon night of the city. Steve had always watched him balance, overcompensate and flail. 

Try to shield his back against the crumbling concrete and brick walls. But always careful not to press his skin against it. 

Because whatever kind of modification it was, it was sensitive. 

When he looked, Steve finally saw it plain. 

At the top of his back, connecting to his shoulder blades, what he had were two blocky silver notches, holding open two stomata, the shadowed flesh inside purple and scarred, striated with golden wire. 

The muscles fluttered, like they were reaching out. 

Deep inside, Steve could see a line of staves, onyx colored and glittering wetly. It must be the connection point, grafted right onto the bone. 

They would feel like his own limbs. And he'd miss them the same way. 

“A break-in would work and cover our tracks. Shouldn't be a problem” Natasha said, looking at the both, eyes spinning plans. 

“Sam. You’re sure you wanna do this? It’s not a line you can walk back,” Steve said. 

“Dude, Captain America needs my help. And I want my wings back. There's no better reason to get back in,” Sam smiled, wider than Steve had ever seen. 

“All right,” Steve said, tension draining from his back. The dull ache in his face subsided. There might only be three of them, but that was enough to make a team. 

“Now all we have to do is get through some of the best cyber security in the world, behind three guarded gates and a twelve-inch steel wall,” Sam said.

“Oh that’s easy,” Natasha said, smiling. From the distant look in her eye, she’d found whatever she was looking for. “All we need to do is kidnap a guy.”


	8. Chapter 8

The suit itched, right at the collar, and Steve was fighting the urge to paw at it like a dog. 

Whoever made suits these days deserved a punch in the face. 

He kept thinking of Mr. Leiberman’s fat pug, back leg trying and failing to scratch its head. 

That’s what Natasha had said he looked like, an itchy pet, and they couldn’t afford the slip up. And there really wasn’t any chance that it would come from her, looking sleek and perfect in a pantsuit, the prototypical vision of a cutthroat business woman. 

There wasn’t a hair out of place in her bun, which looked honey blonde. He hadn’t asked how she’d swung that. 

“Try not to smile,'' Natasha mouthed at him. “These sorts of people don’t smile,” she added. 

He almost quipped that she’d smiled at Sitwell, but then they were inside, her smart heels clicking on the marble of the ugly lobby of the world’s ugliest HTS building. 

It was a murky sort of green, the columns brutalist and squat. All that money, and they couldn’t buy taste. 

“A latte, alright?” Natasha said loud enough that he saw the armed, robotic guards minutely relax. 

The tiniest relaxing of their hydraulics, meaning they weren’t about to burst open like the small tanks they were. 

She fit in here. And the comment made Steve’s nerves fit. A gopher still learning the regular orders. 

He held his breath when they passed the first access gate. 

His heart must have slowed enough, because it chirped benignly and they were on the other side. 

That had been the easy part. 

Natasha taking care of their kidnappee had been just as easy. She’d bumped into him on the street with a grin and a few questions, their supposed mutual school days and a “still working at HTS?” 

Then Steve had come up behind him and dragged him into the tech dead spot they’d researched. A couple of dirty needles later and a quick throbbing at his elbow and Sitwell’s blood marker was in his veins, degrading by the minute. 

“Pick one,” Natasha said, like she meant coffee at the small café, the furniture clashing with the architecture of the lobby. 

It was all starting to give Steve a headache. 

He only just stopped himself from pulling his hand up to rub at his facewire. Bad habit, a leftover from the days he was getting used to it about a century ago. 

“Me?” he said, then ordered a coffee at random. The barista droid beeped an acknowledgement and then its face switched to a timer, and a hand emoji, pointing them to the end of the bar. 

“The alternative is, we kill them all, so yes, pick,” Natasha said, lips quirking around her own cup. 

She had a foam moustache and he almost fell over with the urge to sketch it. He hadn’t felt like sketching in ages. Not since Bucky. His favorite muse. 

He pushed the thought away to focus. He hated the spy stuff. 

“Him,” Steve said, picking up his own cup. Whatever he’d ordered was disgusting. And the man had the misfortune of looking, vaguely, like a guy he’d hated in Basic, a man long since in the ground. 

“You sure?” she asked, eyes smiling now. 

“If you’re not, you pick,” he said, putting the cup back down. They’d be gone soon, and it wasn’t worth taking. 

“Touchy,” Natasha said with a cat-like smile, and walked briskly to a table. 

As she did, there was only the tiniest glint of the tip of her finger, enough to be mistaken for a diamond if anyone even clocked it. 

She grazed the edge of the man’s neck with it and sat, quirking an eyebrow at Steve expectantly. He never made it to his seat. 

The man he’d picked collapsed, shaking, and everyone converged around him. 

Natasha made it first, calling for aid, and slipping off his key card. 

The barista came around the bar, screen now displaying basic first aid, and the ETA for medics. 

Natasha stumbled back, looking overcome, and Steve caught her easily, dragging her to the elevator banks as she hiccupped sobs.

No one turned to look or stop them as the doors closed behind them. 

As soon as they clicked shut, she stopped leaning on him. Moving away, straightening her suit jacket, she looked calm and fresh, ready for a day at the office, focused on watching the floor numbers rise. 

“Stop staring, he’ll be fine. It’s modified botulinum, I’ve used it a thousand times,” she said and Steve shook his head. 

They stopped at one floor, finding themselves moving aside easily for a heavy cleaning cart. 

It stuttered on the entry, like something was wrong with the wheel, and the display numbers on its screen were off. Sam was manning it, smirking vaguely. 

“Clean up on the ground floor?” he said and Natasha slapped the side of the car where it was listing into her, “and wherever you left the maintenance guy,” she added. Sam laughed. 

In the cameras, they must look so ordinary. No alarms had gone out yet, anyway. 

“Remember the plan, boys,” Natasha said sternly, and slipped out at the next stop. Sam and Steve were going two floors up. 

“How _did_ it go?” Steve said, as the doors opened. 

“Pretty sure it was: cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of war,” Sam answered and they laughed, moving at speed over the ugly dark carpet to the doors they’d seen on the schematics they’d downloaded. 

The final hurdle. 

“Can I help you?” the man posted at the steel bars that blocked it off. The main vault. His name tags said Meade. He wasn’t looking at Sam, who looked like any other maintenance guy, fighting with a stuck wheel on his cart. 

“Sure can,” Steve said, and punched him square in the face. 

Meade hit his panic button as he went down. And came up, punch-drunk but swinging. 

Steve grinned. He held off security, all of them uniformly beefy and upgraded, limbs plastisteel and strong, but unskilled.

Behind him, Sam made quick work of the door, the quick-key program they’d rigged working like a charm. The digital lock wasn’t too high-powered. After all, only Sam would have any real motive to steal the wings, and he hadn’t had friends before. As security locked down their floor, no one even realized Natasha was elbow deep in the servers, taking what they’d really come there for. 

Steve hurled one guard into another two and slipped behind Sam, the door clanging shut behind them. 

They had exactly 90 seconds before they got it open again. 

“Ready?” Steve asked over his shoulder, prepping their exit. 

“Yeah” Sam said, voice so quietly reverent that Steve turned the rest of the way. 

In his arms they looked like two prehistoric ravens, asleep with their heads tucked under their wings. They were matte and blocky, nothing like the sleek wings Sam had shown him. 

Carefully, Sam held them out and turned. 

They were heavier than Steve thought, the texture grainy, and oddly warm to the touch. The connecting end was easy to spot, the same onyx staves as the ones inside Sam, gleaming dully. 

At least until Sam lifted his shirt. 

Steve had barely lifted then to the height of the stomata when they leapt to life in his hands. 

The onyx sparked, reaching for its twin, latching on to Sam’s skin with grasping tendrils, that sank into the flesh around the silver slats like anchors as the wings settled where they were meant to be. 

They came to life with ruby and amethyst lights, interlocking pieces clicking into place, fluttering as they settled. When Sam turned, standing straighter, he looked like a different man.

“Captain,” he said with a nod “let’s blow this popsicle stand”. 

Steve buzzed his ear piece and Natasha confirmed. He nodded, and hit the detonator. 

The wall exploded outward, flinging debris into the street. And before he could say it, Sam had him in his arms and outside, whooping in the whirling air. 

Below them there was another explosion, and Natasha’s small white hands reaching out. 

Sam had them both on the next rooftop, the one they’d turned into a makeshift dead zone, before the guards or anyone else could put it together. 

Racing down the stairs to street level and the innocuous stolen vehicle waiting for them, Natasha spat out a rapid fire report. 

“It’s the fucking summit. In sixteen hours, every key member of the World Security Board is going to be in the same room. That’s the only time there’s enough high clearance DNA markers in the room for full system access to SHIELD’s AI. And with your little buddy, the disc we handed over to Zola, Pierce could do anything. No one would know. A few clicks and SHIELD turns fully into HYDRA, and no one the wiser.”

“Except us,” Sam said, slipping a coat on, tugging it over his wings. It would do, in a pinch. No one would be looking too closely at them, not on the ground. 

They’d start by searching the skies. 

“They’ll be on high alert; they’ll connect the dots that it was us. And HYDRA doesn't like leaks,'' Steve said grimly. 

There hadn’t been anything but bad news, it looked like they’d be storming the headquarters anyway. Unless they didn’t mind a poisoned AI with access to the world’s weapons and authorities declaring them public enemy number one. 

With those resources, even they would be pretty quickly eliminated. Worse, there would be plenty of other names on the list, threats it would eliminate. And then move on to remake the planet in HYDRA’s image. 

That AI had nuclear codes, as an appetizer. 

With that in mind, Steve had a plan, piling into the old clunker of a car the way they’d agreed on, Sam at the wheel and Natasha behind them, eyes scanning for threats coming up. 

Steve sat and thought as they started off in silence. They made good time, fast enough to be moving but not enough to be noticed. 

Just as he opened his mouth to say it, the way he thought maybe they could save something of this and redeem just a little of his second life, he felt something crunch onto their roof. 

The bullets came next, raining down. 

Natasha was already in motion, wrapping around him, torso contracting and expanding with false and replaced ribs, pulling him away, when it happened. 

The silver arm crashed through the windshield, sending the numbers and gauges glowing on it flying in a storm of glass and circuits, and pulled the steering wheel free. 

Sam jumped. The car skidded, crashed into again and again, both by ordinary people on the road and what had to be HYDRA. 

Twisting around Natasha, Steve used his shoulder and slammed the door loose, sparking metal along the asphalt. 

He reached for Sam, pulled them both close, and then they were in the air and falling.


	9. Chapter 9

Steve could taste nothing but blood and dirty water in his mouth as they landed, with a bone jarring thud to his back, echoing up his spine. 

The shield flickered around them, vanishing to recharge, strained badly from having borne the brunt of the impact. 

Steve got up. It was what he did, even as he felt a bruise threading and healing in his shoulder. If only Erskine could see him now. 

They rolled to their feet next to him, all of them too thoroughly trained to be thrown. 

Natasha sped off first, moving like long gone deer, shooting at the men on the bridge, staring them down. They shot back. 

Then it was Sam, bursting forth with his wings, wonderfully and fearfully made toward the guns shouting “Go! I got this!”. 

Steve ran, after Natasha, right into the twists of a fish market. At least it smelled like a fish market to him as they ran through it, blood and sea water and working bodies and frying oil, god knows what else splashing up from puddles as they went. 

It was dark between the stalls, built in seconds just for this, and meant to be taken down just as quickly in the face of authorities, all of them tarped and leaning and frail. 

Behind them, the soldier, Steve’s ghoul, crashed through them after them, scattering living crabs and dead eels, almost fresh fish slapping wetly on the floor, scattered stalls of flowers exploding outward like organic fireworks. 

He slid down, gliding under a cart loaded heavy with melons, close to spoiling from the smell. As he went, in the corner of Steve’s eyes, puppets and bears and kewpie dolls grinned maniacally at him, as saleswomen tore them down to protect their investment. 

Then he was on his feet again, cutting between alleys to reach Natasha, her legs pumping like gazelles. 

“Get out of the way! Stay out of the way!” Natasha screamed, to no effect. It was likely bullets and running weren’t out of the norm here. 

The people gawked and let them pass, at least, too focused on the task at hand, plenty taking the time to get their wares out of the way. 

He saw her set her jaw and launch a grenade behind her. He heard it go off, the screams and snap of flying shrapnel, and, thank God, the stuttering of the soldier’s steps. 

They didn’t stop for long, and a crate crashed behind them, thrown hard, the splinters of the plastic digging into Steve’s heels. 

Before he could stop her, Natasha spun, launching herself at the specter. 

It was impressive, like watching a spider latch onto its prey, her hands flickering into silver claws going for his neck. 

Steve’s shield flew. It hit too late. 

The bullet came first, hitting Natasha’s middle and spewing black bile. 

Then the shield slammed into the ghoul’s head, setting her loose. 

Steve barely caught her, her heel cracking open a tank, the water and sea urchins spilling out like road spikes. She was too limp in his arms. 

“Go,” he whispered into her hair and turned. He was done running. 

Steve kicked one of the urchins into the ghost’s face, who batted it away, eyes annoyed. But there were spikes in his flesh hand. 

It felt good. To do something, no matter how minor. Steve had always liked fights a little bit too much. 

Then came the shield, pitched by Steve right at the relentless ghost, and it was a dance, the flickering steel of the soldier’s knife and Steve’s arms coming down. 

They were matched, a gleaming metal arm as strong as his, like they knew each other.

They met and fell away, the crowd around them beginning to gather. Steve didn’t care, and neither did the soldier. 

He barely felt the burn of the wire in his face, lit up white hot from inside. Didn’t even realize how strong its hailing was, a pitch growing higher as it rang through his jaw. And then he hit the soldier’s mask, thick matte black, and it flew. 

For a moment, he thought it was a face plate, and that when he turned all there would be was circuits and wires and organic oil. 

Instead, it was a knife to the heart, the face he knew better than any, immortalized in more sketches than he could count. 

“Bucky?” 

The wire was alive, he felt it calling to a frequency that finally hailed back, glowing gold and alive in a ghost’s face, the same false scar. 

It could only be him, impossible to duplicate. Even HYDRA couldn’t copy their special frequency. Not even the Howlies had it. 

He knew him, in his bones. Then it was worse than a knife, worse than drowning in ice and not getting die but to live in agony with no end in sight. 

“Who the hell is Bucky?” 

Steve was ready to die. He’d never felt it more. No matter how the wire sang, a duet no one but the two of them could hear, two halves made whole. 

Then Sam came down like an avenging angel, kicking him aside, and Steve didn’t know to root for. He came again, and the soldier threw him by the wings. 

It was Natasha, beautiful and broken, standing like a ragged doll, that made the choice. 

She shot at Buck with some unwieldy metal monster stolen from some stall, blowing him away in a cloud of smoke. 

It wasn’t enough. They were outnumbered. And too banged up to run. 

When the remainder of STRIKE came down on them like a plague of locusts, mingling with the crowd, he opened his arms. 

Numb, Steve let them lead him into the van, dark inside from the auto tint and the smell of previous prisoners. Nothing could really get that out. 

It should hurt more, he thought, but even the wire in his face felt cold and dead. A broken circuit. 

Two STRIKE members jostled them inside, Natasha wincing from a bullet, her middle coated in blood and oil, Sam flinching when his back hit the wired walls, wings magnet locked and recoiling. 

It was one way to keep them still. The other was the three blocky STRIKE members in with them, matte black and brutal. Blunt instruments. 

They all looked the same to him, even now, heads angling oddly to balance the metal and wires, and whatever flesh they had left. 

“It was him,” he said out loud without meaning to. 

Like it was the only way to understand that it was real. That it wasn’t some twisted dream. 

The words refused to stop coming. “He looked right at me like he didn't even know me.” His voice cracked. 

Sam licked his lips, looking to Natasha for help. She blinked muzzily, shrugged and winced. 

Steve was alive. Bucky wasn’t a stretch, for her. Steve didn’t know why it was for him. 

“But you were frozen, right? After becoming. You. How would he be here?” Sam asked, eyes flickering to the guards.

“Zola.'' The son of a bitch, the curse that refused to stop haunting him even after a missile detonated on his head. The viper at the heart of it all, from the beginning. 

“It’s barely in the history books, I checked. They were keeping it quiet. Not for the reasons I thought, knowing what we know now. Bucky's whole unit was captured in '43, and Zola experimented on them. Him - he was the only one to survive it, we thought they hadn’t really had time to get started but-” he swallowed, hard. 

This was the longest he’d talked about it since it happened. He’d never talked about it at all to anyone but Bucky, and Bucky hadn’t really let him. There were things he’d let go. 

Steve hated himself for it. But that didn’t matter. Not when the story wasn’t over. When he’d promised to be there till the end of the line and then found out that he’d lied.

“Whatever he did helped Bucky survive the fall. They must have found him and…” He choked back a sob. 

He’d been alone. Scared. Steve hadn’t been there though he should have. He could have jumped from the train. 

“None of that's your fault, Steve” Natasha said, voice fading. She was dying, and she was comforting him, and he didn’t deserve it. 

The wire in his face throbbed dully with the echoes of their frequency. It made his teeth ache. He wanted to rip it out. "Even when I had nothing, I had Bucky" he said, and shut up. 

There was nothing left to say.

For the first time, Steve didn't want to keep going, fighting. There wasn't a point. No home front, no bullet in the barrel of his best guy's gun. He felt every single one of his years. He shouldn't have lived past his own century. He knew that now. 

Natasha groaned, or something inside her did, bone grating on iron. There was no color in her face anymore. 

Sam started to reach for her and caught himself, closing his hand with the burn of the magnets in his wings yanking him back. 

"Bzzt. Bzzt. Bzzzzzzt.” The guards looked at each other, it seemed, anyway. Hard to tell. 

Natasha and Sam looked at each other, bracing. 

The sound of a stun baton gearing up. The long way, the one that meant you were making sure you had enough juice to make sure your target wasn't getting up. 

Steve watched their shoulders square up with a horrific detachment. _Please be for me. Not them. Please not them,_ he thought, his own shoulders refusing to budge. 

And then it came down hard on the black headpiece of the other guard, metal and plastic cracking under the strain, and up and across to hit horizontally on the other's face. 

It took seconds, and they were down cold in a shower of glass and wire. 

The guard that was left dropped the baton, and Steve noticed the patch of clear blue lapis-turquoise glass synthskin on the pale skin of their forearm. Not standard issue. 

It glowed again as the studded black gloves moved up, the fingers clearly too skinny for them and their weight, to push the heavy face piece off and away. 

"Ugh, that thing's like an Iron Maiden'' said Maria Hill. It had to be her. No one else he knew had the same smooth synthskin-glass for cheeks, the glowing mechanisms inside lighting up her eyes like bar signs. If the light wasn't coming from the eyes themselves. 

She rotated her wrist and sent out the commands that set them free. 

While Sam put pressure on Natasha’s middle, she pulled a quikclot pack from her boot. 

“It should hold until we get somewhere safe. You know how to use it, Mr. I Have No Idea Who You Are?” 

“It’s Sam, and I do.” 

“Good for you. Let’s blow this popsicle stand,” and Steve surprised himself with a laugh.


	10. Chapter 10

The tunnels were cool and dim, smelling of minerals and well water and fertile earth, even at the mouth of the entrance. They were lit by cold blue light, running along in coils, pointing the way in a language Steve couldn’t decipher.

To someone who didn’t know the language, or of art, it might look like the random chaos of street painting, graffiti and insults and lewd jokes. But he could see it said something, even if he couldn’t tell if they were following them to the guillotine. Not that it mattered, not really. Hill herself was made of the same colors and led them confidently through. 

The fact that they might not be able to trust her flickered in and out of his thoughts. At this point, he barely felt it mattered. All he could think was Bucky and HYDRA and the little disc that heralded the end he wasn’t sure he feared anymore. 

The light from Hill’s face dimmed and ebbed, fluttering like wings. 

As they clattered down metal stairs, Natasha balanced in the cradle of his arms linked to Sam’s, he saw two shadows move below them. 

Like she felt them thinking it, Hill met his eyes and then spoke down to what must be medics: “GSW. She's lost at least a pint, combo platter. Hemo, peri-t and a ton of oleo.'' She winked at Steve when she finished, and Sam nodded, agreeing with her assessment. 

Whatever it meant. People just bled blood, last time Steve was in a war. 

The two shapes coalesced, two skinny wraiths that were a little too in sync not to be connected in some way. Their arms reminded Steve of mantises, and something about their faces, their squat necks, of the Sisters of Charity that nursed the sick, old and dying in Brooklyn. The nuns that had hovered over his mother, tending to her body both as she was agonizing and after. 

Bucky had held his hand the whole time, and the wound was torn open again, just like that. 

“Let us take her,” they’d said, sounding like every soft voiced doctor Steve had ever known, and there had been plenty. But none with the little metal trill at the end of their sentence. 

“We see him first,” Hill said and it trickled down Steve's spine like ice water, the way it had in the high mountains in Austria. 

He knew who she meant. 

There was really only one candidate. Only one man she’d ever go rogue for. Which meant he was a lot stupider than he thought. Natasha too, which wasn’t really a comfort. 

Natasha winced, tightening an arm around Sam. He wasn’t sure which pain prompted it, the wound or Hill’s revelation. 

Steve let go, let Sam take the rest of her weight. He didn’t want to risk a knee jerk reaction that could hurt her. Physically, anyway. 

Together, like a unit, they stepped into a round room, natural light filtering down. 

There wasn’t any surprise at seeing Nick Fury slumped at the table, the only furniture in sight. Even if he looked like a propped up skeletal corpse, his skin sallow and ashy, sunken and abraded, like parts had been deemed too compromised and removed. 

But his only eye was as sharp as ever, staring at Steve over the wreckage of his body. 

“About damn time” he said, and sounded the same, even if Steve could see that his neck seemed to barely be able to hold his head up, the tendons straining and thin. 

The flat matte black of his head piece was incongruously the same, looking almost alive, reminding Steve of the flat ridges of an angry cobra he’d seen once in London, labelled only ‘North Africa.’ 

Bucky had been with him, pretending to shove him forward just to hold his arm in public, laugh in his ear, brush the shell of it with his lips. 

It made him angrier than he should be, heart sick and spoiling for a fight. “Back from the dead?” he snarled and Fury’s eyebrow sluggishly tried to arch. Maybe his muscle control wasn’t there yet. Or there was nerve damage. Or both. 

Before Nick could say anything, Natasha did. 

“I saw you die. I felt your heart stop. Saw the blood,” she said, staring straight at him like she couldn’t believe he was there. 

“I did die. But I’ve done it before. Plenty of times,” he replied. 

“Easier this time around,” Hill added, coming up behind him and injecting something into his neck with a thick hypodermic. Whatever it was he got some color back. 

His muscles moved easier, like they’d filled out, and his hands, just as skeletal, moved up to touch his Adam’s apple. 

He’d gotten so gaunt that Steve could see an extra lump there, under the cartilage, too square to be organic. 

"Tetrodotoxin B. Slows the pulse to one beat a minute. Death on demand. To answer your question Captain, you can’t come back from what you are.” 

He wondered how many times it had happened before the implant; how many corpses his body was stitched from. Which part really was Nick, or if it was just the plate in the skull. A black box. 

“And if you can’t be fixed next time around? Because we’re talking about ending a war,” he said and Natasha shook her head, reached her hands out to the sticklike limbs of the doctors, that bore her away like she weighed nothing. 

As they did, Steve saw one of them digging fingers into the wound, the other piercing a metal sound into her closest artery. 

“Can't kill you if you're already dead. Should the worst come to pass,” Fury knocked thin knuckles on the plastisteel spanning his head, “game over, try again in a new body.” He didn’t smile and neither did Steve, but both their shoulders relaxed. On an even keel. “Now, last I checked, we’re on the same side. And it’s-” 

“Just us,” Steve finished and sighed. 

“It’s Pierce, isn’t it?” Fury said and Steve nodded, finally sitting down. He felt as tired as every year of his age. 

Sam hovered close to him, like he was wondering if a hand on Steve’s arm would be comforting. Steve reached out and squeezed it, then dropped it. There was only so much kindness he could handle. 

“You know that fucker declined the Nobel Peace Prize?” he said, "peace wasn't an achievement, it was a responsibility. See, it's stuff like this that gives me trust issues,” Nick grumbled, trying to get them on board. 

It was all too much suddenly, and without a word Steve got up to check on Natasha, Sam close behind. It was easy to follow the noise, the subtle whir of medical tools and the slurping of fluid lines, blood finally draining where it was needed, along with whatever else Natasha’s body had lost. No arcane sign posts necessary to find the infirmary and crack open the door. 

The doctors didn’t look up, fluttering around like lost moths. The whole thing stank of blood and oil and tears. He swallowed down vomit. It wouldn’t help anybody. 

“We have to take it all down. All of it,” Steve said, mostly to himself. His plans had changed shape, but they were starting to become clear in his mind. 

“I know,” Sam said. 

“Fury’s gonna fight me on it,” Steve added. 

“I know,” Sam said. 

They were hovering in the dark hallway, watching the doctors descend on her now, floating by the operating table like ghosts with steel knives for fingers. 

Natasha stared blankly at the ceiling, drained of tension even if her torso was held open by rib spreaders, the organs inside pumping along, sleek and strong, threaded through with bolts and rods and silver wire. There was a ticking, like cogs in a clock. 

Steve wasn’t sure if that was a good sign. Natasha seemed calm - only the clenching and unclenching of her hands gave her away. 

“He's gonna be there,” Sam said. 

“I know,” Steve said. 

He was looking into a room and seeing himself, decades ago, Bucky wiping whiskey over his split bloodied knuckles. Steve’s hands had looked like fragile paper birds in Bucky’s big tan ones. But Bucky’s hands had been careful, even as he berated Steve for being a stupid idiot for starting fights he couldn’t win. On Steve, his touch was always gentle. Even after he’d waded in and punched the jerks himself, and pulled Steve out, then curing his wounds as best he could. 

Not once had he failed. Out of a thousand times. 

How could Steve justify not doing the same, when it was only being asked of him once? When Bucky needed him? 

Sam breathed carefully next to him, looking at Natasha, small on the table. Steve wondered what he saw. 

“Look, whoever he used to be, the guy he is now, I don't think he's the kind you save. He's the kind you stop,” Sam said, a little desperate. 

“Maybe, maybe not,” Steve said. 

Before Sam could tell him he was being stubborn, Natasha called, “If you two are done staring at my chest, can you tell me if we have a game plan?” She sounded like herself again, only slightly strained and Steve found himself smiling. 

He had missed her, and she’d only been gone for a handful of bleeding hours. 

“Actually, we do. So long as Fury has some proper gear stashed around here somewhere,” he said. It was more like a sketch of a plan, but it was something. The rest of them could help with the details. 

“You wound me, Rogers,” Hill said from somewhere behind him. She walked quietly. “Of course we do.” 

He didn’t know the light from her implants could be dimmed that low. It made her look gunmetal grey, the way her faceplates and eyes reflected the color of the walls. 

Steve wondered if she’d done it on purpose or not. 

“Let’s talk shop then,” Steve said when he felt the barest touch on his elbow. Dry and thin as twigs, the brush of very edges in the doctor’s hand made him want to scream. 

“She may be along in fifteen minutes. Excuse us, but we are beginning closing, now. We do not like an audience” and Steve didn’t want to be one either. Not for whatever they were. But he didn’t leave his teammates behind. 

Except once, and it was killing him now. 

Over the pale, angular doctor, he nodded at Natasha and she nodded back. Then he waited until the door closed in his face. 

He sighed and rolled his neck. Getting emotional would make him useless. Hill and Sam let him have the moment. 

Steve rolled his shoulders and moved, followed Hill back to Fury. And got ready to pitch his case. It was all going down, no matter what he had to do.


	11. Chapter 11

It was pretty cramped, the three of them half-crouched, knees touching in the warm metal belly. That wasn’t actually so bad. 

It was the smell that was getting to him, diesel fumes and adrenaline and years of rot, fruit and meat and god knows what else, seeped into the walls of the garbage truck. Even SHIELD had waste to get rid of. 

It had been easy enough, to hijack its programming, and then settle in, letting the automated brain of it drive them inside. 

“Target site in five,” Hill whispered and Steve nodded. Sam’s wings shivered, clicking as they settled, in anticipation. 

Steve felt the eerie calm he always did before a mission was Oscar Mike. Over the radio, he heard Natasha confirm she was in position. After a moment, Fury said the same. 

It was the end of the line, now, as the truck rumbled past the magnet strips of the gate and docked in place with a metallic clatter. 

The back opened, to the dark gaping mouth of the chute, and they were in motion, fighting back against the flowing tide of refuse, up until Hill dipped into the side, lights flickering to lead the way along the secondary tunnel. She was the smallest, after all. 

Steve mostly did it with his eyes closed, Sam right behind him. 

They pulled each other through the small metal door, yanked free by Hill. It was a small hallway, concrete and dim. Unguarded, for now. 

Hill gestured, two fingers and a fist. Only two in the comm room they were here for, and ready for interference. 

A flat palm, a delay to buy and the others time. Then a chop and a flicker of light from her forearm. 

When the heavy door opened, they were ready, weapons raised. It was almost too easy. 

The techs moved aside, flesh wobbling around their implants, starting to fuse to their chairs. 

“It’s time,” Hill said, and Steve felt calm. 

He’d had a lot of time to think of what to say - to himself, to them. To Bucky, too, if he could hear. “Attention, all SHIELD agents. This is Steve Rogers. You've heard a lot about me over the last few days, some of you were even ordered to hunt me down.” He swallowed. That was still hard. Hill had shown him the wanted posters, glowing inside her arm plates. His nose looked off. 

“But I think it's time you know the truth.,” Steve continued. “You and everyone: SHIELD is not what we thought it was, it's been taken over by HYDRA. Alexander Pierce is their leader. I don't know how many, or who, but I know they're in the building. They could be standing right next to you. They almost have what they want: absolute control.” 

Now the tricky part. “They shot Nick Fury and it won't end there. If you let them, they _will_ rewrite our AI. And HYDRA will be able to kill anyone that stands in their way, unless we stop them. I know I'm asking a lot, but the price of freedom is high, it always has been, and it's a price I'm willing to pay. And if I'm the only one, then so be it. But I'm willing to bet I'm not,” Steve let the comm click off. 

There was nothing else to say. 

Somewhere above, gunfire rang out. He hoped it was Natasha, or the Council fighting back. Shutting off their permissions. Even if they didn’t, they were one member short and didn’t know it. Enough to buy them a little time. 

“You’re a poet too?” Sam laughed and Steve smiled at him. Hill rolled her eyes and shoved the desk away. 

“This will take a minute,” she said, and lit up her fingers, cutting open the emergency hatch. 

Anybody with a key was floors away and compromised. 

In the blue glow, Sam said, “I’ve been thinking,” and Steve tensed. 

“How do we know the good guys from the bad guys?” Hill laughed, throwing the heavy metal hatch aside with a clang. 

“If they're shooting at you, they're bad,” Steve said, and above them, there was more gunfire. “Right. You first,” he said, and watched Sam vanish into the dark. 

“You’ll only have eight minutes, Cap,” Hill said, and slid down. 

In his head Steve counted to fifty, and followed her down into the dark. Sam would be flying in the upper level, undoing the first dam safeguard. Hill would be near the middle, at the second lock. And Steve would be in the belly of the beast, as low as it went, at the final door. 

With Sam, Hill, and Natasha playing merry havoc upstairs, he’d be able to activate the failsafe. When the third seal was opened, the river and sea water would flood in and fry the tower of banked servers that gave life to the AI. If he lived that long. 

Bullets clanged off the ladder in the dark as he slid down at speed, sacrificing stealth for safety with the shield glowing orange around him. 

In his ears, he heard the buzzing of Hill and Sam and Fury and Natasha, on their own missions, opening the way. 

When he hit the ground floor, oddly mulchy from the proximity of the sea, all of it smelling like rotting kelp, he rolled, ducking fire from the security droids. They scuttled at him like lobsters, rolling and batting tails, swiping at him between bouts of fire. 

The security droids aimed carefully, trying not to hit each other or the glowing power coils, pulsing with life. 

It took Steve a second, between the ringing clang of his shield flying to sever their towers, cracking open their beady artificial eyes, and the screech of their joints as they rolled back and fired, to realize he wasn’t imagining Pierce’s voice. 

“ _Our enemies are your enemies, Nick. Disorder, war-”_

_“Motherfucker, just shut the fuck up.”_ Steve had never been happier to hear Nick Fury. 

The distraction was enough for a droid to take it, slamming into his chest and rolling him into the wall. He dug his fingers into the gap between the body and the legs, straining against it trying to close on his forearm until he dug out the tube that fed its hydraulics. Body-hot oil splashed on Steve’s chest as he kicked it away, watching it twitch and fade. There was chaos around it, the death trashes of its fellows and the remaining living droid, its eye cracked from his shield. There was a droning whoop, like whale song. One failsafe tripped, levels above. There was hope, if only a little. It was easy to kick the droid and run into the depths of the tunnels and turn to his own task. 

It was dark and dank, hotter than it should be in the low center of the building. The vulnerable beating heart of it all. And in the darkness, a shadow with a pale face. Bucky’s living ghost. 

They stared at each other, willing the other to back down, the only proof he had so far that Bucky might still be in there. 

“People are gonna die, Buck. Have died. I can't let that happen. Not if I can stop it,” he said, bargaining, ready to beg, feeling like his eleven-year-old self, on his knees in church haggling with God over his mother’s lungs. 

Those blue eyes, that he’d known so well, went sharp and feral. “Please, don't make me do this,” Steve pleaded and then Bucky was kicking him in the chest. 

He hit the ground and flipped backwards, just enough leverage to launch the shield. 

He didn’t have to win. Just had to hit the panel behind Bucky, and attach the flat adhesive of the program burned into the circuits that Natasha and Hill had made with Nick’s access. That was all. 

It still hurt, every blow, given and received. 

There was another whale call, lower and longer. Two of three. 

Bucky snarled, hit his face. Steve hit his middle and they rolled. He managed to land where he wanted, scrambling for the green panel, pulsing slowly like it was calling to him. 

Within a foot Buck was one him, heavy and sure. The sharp steel of a knife was buried deep in his shoulder and he groaned, watching the chip slip from his hand. 

Buck lunged over him for it, standing like he was ready to crush it. 

The adrenaline, the sheer fucking contrariness that had fueled him every day of his life in the face of a body that seemed determined to kill him, and then a war that had felt the same, had him up and running. 

Steve felt no pain as he pulled the blade from his shoulder, and wrapped his arms around Bucky’s throat, pinning him like a butterfly on a corkboard. 

“Drop it,” he hissed. The tower was still alive with screams, Pierce’s voice and Fury’s growl, and explosions. 

Bucky’s forearm, the one still made of flesh, snapped like a breaking branch under his strength. 

In the feed tied to his ear, Hill was begging him to respond. 

The wire in his face burned so badly he almost felt blisters on the inside of his cheek, reaching for Bucky’s line with greedy hands, desperate as his breathing faded. 

Just enough. 

Just enough for Steve to drop his weight and take the sticky mess of wire and press it hard to the warm green glass, soft and ready. 

The final whale call felt like it was screaming in his chest. Ready for activation. 

The bullet hit his middle like a sledgehammer, splattering the green with red. Bucky heaved a rough breath behind him. 

“Get out of there,” Hill wailed, “Please, Cap, go!” 

Bucky was coming toward him. Steve felt. Fine. Full of static. No pain. No fear. 

“Do it now,” Steve insisted, and turned to face Bucky. They were both covered in blood and sweat.

“Cap-” 

“Now. There’s no more time,” he said, and turned to Bucky with the ghost of smile. He opened his arms. _Here I am_. He’d done his part. The rest was up to them. 

Bucky charged him, and Steve let him, both of them sliding along the wet walls, disturbing the little strands of moss that had started to grab hold. 

“You know me,” Steve whispered, watching his face. 

“No,” Bucky growled, punching again and again. Steve barely felt it. 

“You do,” he said with the greatest clarity he had ever felt. “You've known me your whole life,” he said, hearing a rib crack. 

It almost got lost in the ringing wail warning that the AI would come down, the sequence starting. 

“Your name is James Buchanan Barnes,” Steve said. His favorite name in the whole world, then and now. There was a grinding coming toward them, floodgates opening. 

“Shut up! Stop! Fight me!” Bucky demanded, scared and wild-eyed, flexing knuckles bathed in both their blood. 

“I'm not gonna fight you. I love you. I always have. You’re my friend,” he said, feeling punch-drunk. 

Bucky grabbed his shoulders and screamed, “You're my mission! My mission!” 

He barely felt the punch across his face. He wanted to smile. Buck was missing a tooth in the back, since they were kids. The last molar. It just hadn’t grown in. 

"Then finish it. I promised you. I'm with you till the end of the line." 

Bucky pulled back, horrified and staring. 

Then the water swept over them in a single white wave that filled Steve’s mouth with salt. 


	12. Chapter 12

The light was peach pink, for just a moment, fading into the grey of brain matter, as it lowered down by a cove tucked along the river bank. The sand there was the color of oysters, inside and out, threaded through with trash and stones. 

No one would come, for a long time. No one could see from afar. Only he was looking, focused on what was in front of him. 

The man looked like a corpse, fish belly white with blue lips, ringed with yellow-green-purple bruising. He’d seen many bodies like that. He’d _made_ many bodies like that. 

But this one was breathing. Strong. The bruises were starting to heal. Even the cut in his face was scabbing around the black wire poking out of it like a maggot from a rotting mouth. 

He didn’t know why, but he pulled at it, patiently, until the whole thing came loose. There wasn’t much blood. The thin trickle mingled with the river water, made worse. 

He had never failed a mission before. 

He could remember no missteps, no hesitation. He could no longer even remember ever feeling tired. But somehow he was sure there had never been anything quite as challenging as pulling them both back to the surface from under the rushing water. 

It was no wonder he felt something so great it went beyond satisfaction or achievement. That had not made the next step any clearer, though. 

He nursed his arm in his lap, waiting. 

Behind him, buildings leaned and smoked and burned. There was no handler left. He was sure of it. 

There was a tingle along his forehead. He’d felt it before. 

There would be no chair to soothe it. The only thing that felt right was to sit and wait. 

Something would come. There had to be a reason for all this. Answers were in front of him. 

The man blinked, eyes almost too blue against the bloodshot white. “Bucky?” he whispered. 

The Asset nodded. There was nothing else to do. 

“Your face” the man rasped, reaching toward him. 

The Asset let his metal hand drift up. A wire poked out of his own face. 

He pulled hard and fast. It was just as black and thick as the one he’d pulled from the man on the ground. He dropped it next to the other. They were twins. 

“Prob’ly for the best. Outdated anyway. One less way to track…” the man trailed off and the Asset held his breath. 

He wanted to explain he had felt the monitoring device in his arm fizzle out. It had happened before. Between the strain and the crushing water it was no surprise. It felt like a pulled muscle high up in his shoulder. But he couldn’t make himself speak. 

The man focused on the sky, everything whirling in it. He focused on the smallest thing, the size of a man. With wings. 

“Yeah. They don’t need me,” the man said, as if to himself. 

“I do,” the Asset said. There was no one else. 

“Yeah,” the man on the ground said, smiling. 

He was almost sure he would do anything to make that smile happen. It had burrowed in his chest like a living thing down below. The thing that had made him choose to fight the water, even with the shame of failing a mission screaming at him. 

He could trust the man to choose, he knew. 

Now that he was awake, the Asset could fetch medical supplies. A transport. He could do these things easily, even with his injuries. But there was something different now. About all of it. 

“Buck?” the man said. 

“I’m afraid,” he said. He hadn’t known the name of the feeling until he said it out loud. But he was. And growing more afraid by the minute. 

He didn’t like it, but he didn’t want it to stop. It hurt well, like pulling his limbs from the pressure under the parts of a car wreck and feeling the blood flow back in, no tears or compromised limbs, split into compartments beginning to turn necrotic. 

“I know,” the man said, reaching out his hand. 

Carefully, the Asset traced his own fingers along it, from his unbroken metal hand. He wanted to ask the man’s name. 

Somehow he thought the man would give it, instead of calling him insolent or trembling in fear, like the others. 

“But you don’t have to be,” the man said. 

Something that felt warm spread in his chest. “You need medical help. As do I. We will be hunted. I am afraid. What is going to happen?” he asked, because he had to have the sitrep clear, even though he felt less afraid as he did so. 

He cradled the man’s hand in his lap alongside his own. He wanted to touch his hair. 

It was beginning to feel like there was something hidden, something he had to uncover. But different. Not a target cowering behind a corner, or secret orders to puzzle out, or a coveted item to retrieve. More like a part he had been missing, an upgrade to the arm he had not realized he needed, a clear day when he needed to shoot far. 

“I know that, but it doesn’t really matter. Everything’s alright,” the man said, already starting to test his muscles, flexing along. 

Like the asset when he was knocked off a building or transport, assessing his condition. It boded well. 

“How can it be alright?” he said, allowing the man to trace careful hands along his forearm. 

The break was clean. It would be easy to set. They would do it soon. 

“Because we’re together. We have the rest of our lives to fix the rest,” the man said, smiling. 

“Together,” the Asset said, testing the word. It felt right. 

The man sighed. 

It was difficult work, leveraging themselves up. What wasn’t broken was bruised. What wasn’t bleeding was just scabbed over. He had experience with wounds, and these were barely the walking kind. But the man’s arm went over his shoulder, and the Asset’s metal one wrapped around his waist. 

They fit. 

The man smiled at him. “Just us,” he said and the Asset knew it was true. 

It was enough. 

“Together,” he said, and they synched their steps, and walked inland from the riverbank. 

**Author's Note:**

> This is what happens when you grab The Winter Soldier, Cyberpunk 2077, Ghost in the Shell, Blade Runner, Mute and Upgrade, drop them in a blender and go from there :)


End file.
